photo #2292809

Happy 4th...Things you need permission for...- Drive a car. - Build a house. - Go fishing. - Get married. - Educate your own child. - Start a business. - Fly on a plane. - Self-medicate. - Cross the road. - Hunt. - Keep the full value of your labor. - Leave the country.Through taxation, pacifists pay for war, vegans pay for the meat industry, non-smokers pay for tobacco, and the hardworking pay for the lazy. Our future generations are being sold into inescapable debt. Police are becoming ominously more militarized every year. Citizens can be detained, searched, harassed, assaulted and killed with near impunity for an inconceivably-massive list of arbitrary infractions. The government cages the largest prison population the world has ever seen. Spy agencies have been exposed collecting data on our every move. Nearly half of our paychecks are confiscated through taxation and inflation. Our sons are fighting in the same wars our fathers died in. The list of things an individual can do that isn’t taxed, regulated or otherwise illegal grows smaller by the day. The ruling institutions have taken control of every aspect of our lives. Permissible action is no longer determined by any rational ethic; our lives are simply directed by those who would claim authority over us, and this authority is backed only by violence.Imagine a society under these conditions, celebrating a day of independence and freedom.And this is why I'm an anarchist.